Posted 2012/3/26
D. ModernChina |
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| 1. The Republic of China For much of the period from 1912 to 1949, China was a republic in name only. At first, although the government adopted a constitution, Yuan held most of the power. In 1913 the Kuomintang (KMT, or Nationalist Party), a new political party that brought together the T'ung-meng Hui and other revolutionary groups, attempted to limit Yuan's power by parliamentary tactics. Yuan dismissed the parliament, outlawed the KMT, and ruled through his personal connections with provincial military leaders. In 1915 Yuan announced plans to restore the monarchy and install himself as emperor, but he was forced by popular opposition to abandon his plans. This period of political confusion was also one of intense intellectual excitement in China. Modern universities, started in the last years of the Qing, began to produce a new type of Chinese intellectual who was deeply concerned with China's fate and attracted to Western ideas, ranging from science and democracy to communism and anarchism. Thousands of young people went abroad to study in Japan, Europe, and North America. The journal New Youth, begun in the mid-1910s, called on young people to take up the cause of national salvation. Writers imitated Western forms of poetry and fiction, and started writing in the vernacular rather than the classical language that had formerly marked the educated person. Widely circulated periodicals brought this new language and new ideas to educated people throughout the country. One of the issues most strongly promoted was women's rights. Such traditional practices as arranged marriage, concubinage, and the binding of girls' feet to prevent normal growth (tiny feet were considered to enhance women's beauty) were ridiculed as backward, and young women were encouraged to enroll in China's many new schools for women. China enjoyed a respite from Western pressure from 1914 to 1918, when European powers were preoccupied by World War I. Chinese industries expanded, and a few cities, especially Shanghai, Canton, Tianjin, and Hankou (now part of Wuhan), became industrial centers. However, European powers' preoccupation with the war at home also gave Japan an opportunity to try and gain a position of supremacy in China. In 1915 Japan presented China with the Twenty-one Demands, the terms of which would have reduced China to a virtual Japanese protectorate. Yuan Shikai's government yielded to a modified version of the demands, agreeing, among other concessions, to the transfer of the German holdings in Shandong to Japan. After Yuan died in 1916, the central government in Beijing lost most of its power, and for the next decade power devolved to warlords and cliques of warlords. In 1917 China entered World War I on the side of the Allies (which included Britain, France, and the United States) in order to gain a seat at the peace table, hoping for a new chance to halt Japanese ambitions. China expected that the United States, with its Open Door Policy and commitment to the self-determination of all peoples, would offer its support. However, as part of the negotiation process at the peace conference in Versailles, France, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson withdrew U.S. support for China on the Shandong issue. The indignant Chinese delegation refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Young people in China who looked to the West for political ideals were crushed by the decisions at Versailles. When news of the peace conference reached China on May 4, 1919, more than 3,000 students from Beijing universities assembled in the city to protest. The Beijing governor suppressed the demonstrators and arrested the student leaders, but these actions set off a wave of protests around the country in support of the Beijing students and their cause (see May Fourth Movement). a. The Nationalist and Communist Revolutionary Movements After Yuan outlawed the KMT parliamentary party in 1913, Sun Yat-sen worked to build the revolutionary movement, eventually establishing a KMT base in Guangzhou. Sun's ideas became more anti-imperialist during this period. In speeches and writings he stressed that China could not be strong until it rid itself of imperialist intrusions and was reconstituted as the nation of the Chinese people. Other forms of revolution also attracted adherents. Marxism gained a following among urban intellectuals and factory workers in China, particularly after the success of the Communists in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1921 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was organized in Shanghai. During the warlord period after the death of Yuan Shikai, most Western powers dealt with whichever warlord had control of Beijing and ignored the revolutionaries. By contrast, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union), through the Comintern (an international Communist organization), offered to help the Chinese revolutionaries. Believing that the KMT had the best chance of succeeding, the Comintern instructed CCP members to join Sun Yat-sen's KMT. In 1923 Sun agreed to accept Soviet advice in reorganizing the crumbling KMT party and army and to admit Communists into the KMT as part of a united-front policy. Despite Sun's death in 1925, the rejuvenated KMT launched the Northern Expedition in 1926 from its base in Guangzhou. The expedition, an attempt to rid China of warlords and reunify the country under KMT rule, was led by the young general Chiang Kai-shek, who had been trained in Japan and Moscow and had been in charge of the KMT's military academy. Communists aided the advance of Chiang Kai-shek's army by organizing peasants and workers along the way. However, the alliance between the two groups was fragile because the KMT drew its strength from wealthy intellectuals and landowners, while the Communists advocated redistribution of wealth. In 1927, as the KMT army approached Shanghai, Chiang ordered members of the Green Gang, a Shanghai underworld gang, to kill labor union members and Communists, whom he feared were becoming too powerful. The alliance ended, and the KMT began a bloody purge of the Communists. From 1927 to 1937 the KMT under Chiang ruled from Nanjing. Chiang's foremost goal was to build a strong modern state and army. He employed many Western-educated officials in his government, and progress was achieved in modernizing the banking, currency, and taxation systems, as well as transportation and communication facilities. However, China remained fragmented. While a small, Westernized elite and an industrial force developed in the cities, the vast majority of people were poor peasants in the countryside. The rural economy suffered from continued population growth and from the collapse of some local industries, such as silk production and cotton weaving, due to foreign competition. Chiang's highest priority was not improving the lives of peasants but gaining full military control of the country. Many regions remained under warlords, the Communists controlled some areas, and the Japanese were encroaching in North and Northeast China. The Chinese Communists had gone underground after they were purged from the KMT in 1927 and had organized areas of Communist control. The most successful group settled in the countryside near the border between Jiangxi and Fujian provinces in an area they called the Jiangxi Soviet. From there, the group mobilized peasant support and formed a peasant army. One of the top leaders of the Jiangxi Soviet was Mao Zedong. Mao was from a peasant family in Hunan but was educated through the new school system. After graduating from a teacher's college in Hunan, he went to Beijing, where he became involved with Marxist discussion groups. In the 1920s, when most of the early CCP members were organizing workers in the cites, Mao worked in the countryside, developing ways to mobilize peasants. Chiang's army attempted four extermination campaigns against the Jiangxi base, all of which failed against the Communists' guerrilla tactics. In the fifth campaign in October 1934, the KMT encircled the base. Eighty thousand Communists broke out of the KMT encirclement and started what became known as the Long March. For a year, the Communists steadily retreated, fighting almost continuously against KMT forces and suffering enormous casualties. By the time the 8,000 survivors had found an area where they could establish a new base, they had marched almost 9,000 km (6,000 mi), crossing southern and southwestern China before turning north to reach Shaanxi province. This triumph of will in the face of incredible obstacles became a moral victory for the Communists. For the next decade the CCP made its base at Yan'an, a city in central Shaanxi. Although the KMT had forced the Communists to flee, they still faced a major threat from Japan. In 1922 Japan had agreed to return the former German holdings in Shandong to China, but it continued to expand its dominance in Manchuria. In 1931 the Japanese retaliated for an alleged instance of Chinese sabotage by extending military control over all of Manchuria. Chiang Kai-shek knew his armies were no match for Japan's and ordered the KMT to withdraw without fighting. In 1932 Japan established the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria and made Henry Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, its chief of state. Early in 1933 eastern Inner Mongolia was incorporated into Manchukuo. As Japanese aggression intensified, popular pressure mounted within China to end internal fighting and unite against Japan. Chiang, however, resisted allying with the Communists until late 1936, when he was kidnapped by one of his own generals. During his captivity at Xi'an (Sian) in Shaanxi Province, Chiang was visited by Communist leaders, who urged the adoption of a united front against Japan. After his release, Chiang moderated his anti-Communist stance, and in 1937 the KMT and CCP formed a united front to oppose Japan. b. Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II In July 1937 the Japanese tried once again to extend their territory in China. Chiang resisted, and Japan launched a full-scale offensive ( Second Sino-Japanese War). Chiang's forces had to abandon Beijing and Tianjin, but his troops held out for three months in Shanghai before retreating to Nanjing. When the Japanese captured Nanjing in December, they went on a rampage for seven weeks, massacring more than 100,000 civilians and fugitive soldiers, raping at least 20,000 women, and laying the city to waste. By late 1938 Japan had seized control of most of northeast China, the Yangtze Valley as far inland as Hankou, and the area around Guangzhou on the southeastern coast. The KMT moved its capital and most of its military force inland to Chongqing in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Free China, as the KMT-ruled area was called, contained 60 percent of China's population but only 5 percent of its industry, which hampered the war effort. In 1941 the United States entered World War II after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Thereafter, American advisers and aid were flown to China from Burma, which enabled Chiang to establish a number of modern military divisions. However, the bulk of China's 5 million military troops consisted of ill-trained, demoralized conscripts. During the first few years after the Japanese invasion, some genuine cooperation took place between the CCP and the KMT. However, animosity between the groups remained, and the cooperation largely ended after the KMT attacked the CCP's army in 1941. From then on, although both sides continued to resist Japan, they concentrated more on preparing for their eventual conflict with each other. The KMT imposed an economic blockade on the CCP base at Yan'an, making it impossible for the Communists to get weapons except by capturing them from the Japanese. Defeating Japan was left largely to the United States, which was fighting the war in the Pacific. During the war period, the Communists made major gains in territory, military forces, and party membership. They infiltrated many of the rural areas behind Japanese lines, where they skillfully organized the peasantry and built up the ranks of the party and their army (known as the Red Army). The CCP grew from about 300,000 members in 1933 to 1.2 million members by 1945. While in Yan'an, Mao Zedong had time to read Marxist and Leninist works and began giving lectures at party schools in which he spelled out his versions of Chinese history and Marxist theory. Whereas neither Marx nor Lenin had seen significant revolutionary potential in peasants, Mao came to glorify peasants as the true masses. During these years, Mao also perfected methods of moral and intellectual instruction and party discipline, which involved close discussion of assigned texts, personal confessions, struggle sessions (meetings in which people were publicly criticized and punished for past offenses), and dramatic public humiliations. The KMT emerged from the war in a weakened state. Severe inflation had begun in 1939, when the government, cut off from its main sources of income in Japanese-occupied eastern China, printed more currency to finance the mounting costs of wartime operations. Despite substantial U.S. economic aid, the inflationary trend worsened and official corruption increased. The financial problems also caused a loss of morale in the KMT armed forces and alienation of the civilian populace. After Japan surrendered in 1945, bringing World War II to an end, both the CCP and the KMT were rearmed, the KMT by the United States and the Communists by the Soviet Union. The Soviets had accepted the surrender of Japanese troops in Manchuria and turned over large stockpiles of Japanese weapons and ammunition to the CCP. c. Civil War Shortly after Japan's surrender, civil war broke out between CCP and KMT troops over the reoccupation of Manchuria. A temporary truce was reached in 1946 through the mediation of U.S. general George Catlett Marshall. Although fighting soon resumed, Marshall continued his efforts to bring the two sides together. In August 1946 the United States tried to strengthen Marshall's hand as an impartial mediator by suspending its military aid to the KMT government. Nevertheless, hostilities continued, and in January 1947, convinced of the futility of further mediation, Marshall left China. The United States resumed aid to the KMT in May. In 1948 military advantage passed to the Communists, and in the summer of 1949 the KMT resistance collapsed. The KMT government, with the forces it could salvage, sought refuge on the island of Taiwan. Until his death in 1975, Chiang Kai-shek continued to claim that his government in Taiwan was the legitimate government of all of China. Meanwhile, on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong, as chairman of the CCP, proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing. 2. The People's Republic The new Communist government, a one-party state under the rule of the CCP, brought an end to the long period of Western imperialist involvement in China. Regions within the country's historic boundaries that had fallen away since the overthrow of the Manchus were reclaimed, including Tibet and Xinjiang in western China (Tibet: Reincorporation into China; Xinjiang Uyghur Automomous Region: History). China established alliances with the countries of the emerging Socialist bloc. In 1950 China and the USSR signed a treaty of friendship and alliance, and in supplementary agreements the Soviets gave up their privileges in Northeast China. During the Korean War (1950-1953), Chinese troops aided the Communist regime of North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces. China also aided the Communist insurgents fighting the French in Vietnam, and Chinese premier Zhou Enlai played an important role in negotiating the 1954 Geneva Accords that ended the hostilities known as the First Indochina War. a. Transformation of the Economy and Society During the first few years of Communist leadership, the new government reorganized nearly all aspects of Chinese life. To revive the economy, which had been disrupted by decades of warfare, the CCP adopted measures to curb inflation, restore communications, and reestablish the domestic order necessary for economic development. The government also orchestrated campaigns and struggle sessions to mobilize mass revolutionary enthusiasm and remove from power those likely to obstruct the new government. In the 1951 campaign against individuals who had been affiliated with KMT organizations or had served in its army, tens of thousands were executed and many more sent to labor reform camps. The CCP made fundamental changes to society. New marriage laws that prohibited men from taking more than one wife and interference with remarriage by widows assured women of a more equal position in society. Women also received equal rights with respect to divorce, employment, and ownership of property. The CCP made every effort to control the spread of ideas. Through the press and through schools, the government directed youth to look to the party and the state rather than to their families for leadership and security. The CCP assumed strict control over religion, forcing foreign missionaries to leave the country and installing Chinese clerics willing to cooperate with the Communists in positions of authority over Christian churches. Intellectuals were made to undergo specialized programs of thought reform directed toward eradicating anti-Communist ideas. Government takeover of businesses undermined the power of the urban-based capitalists who had gained influence under the KMT. To make use of their expertise, however, the government often enlisted previous business owners to manage companies. The government's first five-year plan, initiated in 1953 and carried out with Soviet assistance, emphasized the expansion of heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods. Through the progressive socialization of Chinese agriculture (making ownership of land collective, not individual or family), the landowning elite was eliminated, the source of its income and influence abolished. As the CCP took control of new areas, it taught the peasants in those areas that social and economic inequalities were not natural but rather a perversion caused by the institution of private property. Wealthy landowners were not people of high moral standards but were exploiters. To create a new communal order where all would work together unselfishly for common goals, the Communists first redistributed property. Their usual method was to send a small team of cadres (party administrators) and students to a village to cultivate relations with the poor, organize a peasant association, identify potential leaders, compile lists of grievances, and organize struggle sessions. Eventually the inhabitants would be classified into five categories: landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants, and hired hands. The government then would confiscate the holdings of landowners, and sometimes land owned by rich and middle peasants, and redistribute it more evenly. The wealthy also endured struggle sessions, which sometimes led to executions of landlords. This stage of land reform resulted in the creation of a castelike system in the countryside. The lowest caste was composed of the descendants of those labeled landlords, while the descendants of former poor and lower-middle peasants became a new privileged class. Agricultural collectivization followed land reform in several stages. First, farmers were encouraged to join mutual-aid teams of usually less than 10 families. Next, they were instructed to set up cooperatives, consisting of 40 or 50 families. From 1954 to 1956 the Communists created higher-level collectives (also called production teams) that united cooperatives. At this point, economic inequality within villages had been virtually eliminated. The state took over the grain market, and peasants were no longer allowed to market their crops. The reorganization of the countryside created a new elite of rural party cadres. Illiterate peasants who kept the peace among villagers and exceeded state production targets had opportunities to rise in the party hierarchy. This created social mobility far beyond anything that had existed in imperial China, which had only provided advancement opportunities to educated peasants. Another byproduct of the reorganization of the countryside was the extension of social services, because collectives throughout the country coordinated basic health care and primary education for their members. b. The Hundred Flowers and the Great Leap Forward In 1956 Mao Zedong launched a campaign to expose the party to the criticism of Chinese intellectuals under the slogan let a Hundred Flowers Bloom.?Mao was afraid that the revolutionary fervor of CCP members was waning, that they were losing touch with the people and becoming authoritarian bureaucrats. Although most intellectuals were cautious at first, Mao repeatedly urged people to speak up, and once the criticism had started, it became a torrent. In 1957 Mao and other party leaders abruptly changed course and launched the so-called Antirightist campaign on the critics for harboring rightist ideology. About half a million educated people lost their jobs and often their freedom, usually because something they had said during the Hundred Flowers period had been construed as anti-Communist. Next Mao launched a radical development plan known as the Great Leap Forward. Mao announced the plan in November 1957 at a meeting of the leaders of the international Communist movement in Moscow, claiming that China would surpass Britain in industrial output within 15 years. Through the concerted hard work of hundreds of millions of people laboring together, he claimed, China would transform itself from a poor nation into a mighty one. In 1958, in a wave of utopian enthusiasm, the CCP combined agricultural collectives into gigantic communes, expecting huge increases in productivity. Throughout the country, communes, factories, and schools set up backyard furnaces in order to double steel production. As workers were mobilized to work long hours on these and other large-scale projects, they spent little time at home or in normal farm work. Peng Dehuai, China's minister of defense and a military hero, offered measured criticisms of the Great Leap policies at a 1959 party meeting. Mao was furious and forced the party to choose between Peng and himself. The CCP ultimately removed Peng from his positions of authority. Within a couple of years, the Great Leap had proved an economic disaster. Industrial production dropped by as much as 50 percent between 1959 and 1962. Grain was taken from the countryside on the basis of wildly exaggerated production reports, contributing, along with environmental calamities, to a massive famine from 1960 to 1962 in which more than 20 million people died. c. Growing Isolation The economic hardship created by the Great Leap was made worse in 1960 by the Soviets' withdrawal of economic assistance and technical advice. As the USSR moved toward peaceful coexistence with the West, its alliance with China deteriorated. In 1962 China openly condemned the USSR for withdrawing its missiles from Communist Cuba under pressure from the United States. Consequently, the USSR reneged on its agreements to aid China's economic development. The Chinese began to compete openly with the USSR for leadership of the Communist bloc and for influence among the members of the Nonaligned Movement, a loose association of countries not specifically allied with either of the power blocs led by either the United States or the USSR. In 1963 Zhou Enlai toured Asia and Africa to gain support for the Chinese model of socialism. Meanwhile, other actions taken by China kept many nonaligned nations wary. In 1959 the United Nations condemned China's actions in Tibet when China suppressed a rebellion there. The Dalai Lama (Tibet's ruler at that time) and thousands of Tibetans fled south to Nepal and India. d. The Cultural Revolution In mid-1966 Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, known simply as the Cultural Revolution. The announced goals of the revolution were to eradicate the remains of so-called bourgeois ideas and customs and to recapture the revolutionary zeal of early Chinese Communism. Mao also wanted to increase his power over the government by discrediting or removing party leaders who had challenged his authority or disagreed with his policies. Earlier in the year, Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, and a few other Mao supporters had begun calling for attacks on cultural works that criticized Mao's policies. Soon radical students at Beijing University, urged by Mao to denounce elitist elements of society, were agitating against university and government officials who they believed were not sufficiently revolutionary. Liu Shaoqi, a veteran revolutionary who had been designated as Mao's successor, tried to control the students, but Mao intervened. He launched an intense public criticism of Liu and sanctioned the organization of Beijing students into militant groups known as Red Guards. Soon students all over China were responding to the call to make revolution, happy to help Mao, whom many worshiped as a godlike hero. In June 1966 nearly all Chinese schools and universities were closed as students devoted themselves full-time to Red Guard activities. Joined by groups of workers, peasants, and demobilized soldiers, Red Guards took to the streets in pro-Maoist, sometimes violent, demonstrations. They made intellectuals, bureaucrats, party officials, and urban workers their chief targets. The central party structure was destroyed as many high officials, including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, were removed from their positions. During 1967 and 1968 bloody fighting among various Red Guard factions claimed thousands of lives. In some areas, rebellion deteriorated into a state of lawlessness. Finally, the army was called in to restore order, and in July 1968 the Red Guards were sent back to school or to work in the countryside. In many areas, the army quickly became the dominant force. During the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, Mao and his supporters continually promoted class struggle against so-called revisionists and counterrevolutionaries. To this end, educated people were singled out for persecution. College professors, middle-school teachers, newspaper journalists, musicians, party cadres, factory managers, and others who could be categorized as educated suffered a wide variety of brutal treatment. Men and women were tortured, imprisoned, starved, denied medical treatment, and forced to leave their children unsupervised when they were sent to labor camps in the countryside. Tens of thousands were killed or committed suicide. CCP delegates to the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969 reelected Mao party chairman with a great deal of fanfare. They named Defense Minister Lin Biao, Mao's personal choice, to be Mao's eventual successor. For several years, Lin was regularly referred to as Mao's closest comrade in arms and best student. Yet, according to the official CCP account, in 1971 Lin turned against Mao, plotted unsuccessfully to assassinate him, and then died in an airplane crash while attempting to flee to the USSR. Lin was officially condemned as a traitor. Much of the political and social turmoil that characterized the first half of the Cultural Revolution subsided in the second half. In 1976 the government arrested a group of four revolutionaries, known as the Gang of Four, and charged them with the crimes of the Cultural Revolution. This event came to mark the official end of the campaign. e. Shifting Foreign Relations In the early years of the Cultural Revolution, China's already strained foreign relations worsened. Propaganda and agitation in support of the Red Guards by overseas Chinese strained relations with many foreign governments. A successful Chinese hydrogen bomb test in 1967 In the early 1970s, however, China's foreign relations began to improve dramatically. In 1971 the People's Republic of China was given the China seat in the United Nations, replacing the nationalist government on Taiwan, which had continued to hold the seat after losing the civil war with the Communists in 1945. In 1972 U.S. president Richard Nixon made an official visit to China during which he agreed to the need for Chinese-American contacts and the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Taiwan. In the wake of these developments, many other nations transferred their diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the mainland Communist government. In 1972 China restored diplomatic relations with Japan. f. China After Mao Premier Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao both died in 1976, precipitating a struggle for power between moderate and radical leaders within the party. As a compromise, Hua Guofeng, an administrator without close ties to either faction, became premier. About the same time, he was named to succeed Mao as party chairman. Hua then concentrated on stabilizing politics, aiding recovery from massive earthquakes that had struck Tangshan, near Beijing, in July 1976, and fostering economic development. Hua's prominence was short-lived. In 1977 the party reinstated moderate reformer Deng Xiaoping to a leadership post, making him first deputy premier. (Deng had returned to public office as China's vice premier in 1973 but then had been purged again by the Gang of Four in 1976.) By 1978 Deng was in firm control of the government. Deng focused on the problem of relieving poverty through economic growth. As his guiding slogan, he promoted the Four Modernizations of agriculture, industry, technology, and defense. In agriculture, Deng sanctioned steps toward dismantling the commune system. He instituted a so-called responsibility system under which rural households were assigned land and other assets that they could treat as their own. Anything a household produced above what it owed the collective was its own to keep or sell. The state encouraged sideline enterprises, such as growing vegetables and setting up small businesses, and the income of farmers rapidly increased, especially in the coastal provinces, where commercial opportunities were greatest. Deng imported foreign technology to help modernize industry. He also abandoned Mao's insistence on Chinese self-sufficiency and began courting foreign investors. Guangdong Province, on the border with Hong Kong (which had become one of Asia's leading financial centers) was especially well situated to benefit from foreign investment. Deng reinstated examinations as the means of selecting college students in 1977, and Chinese students began to be sent abroad for advanced technical and management training. In the late 1970s and early 1980s China revived and expanded the system of military academies, which had been obliterated during the Cultural Revolution. Deng's policies set in motion an economic boom that led to a tripling of average incomes by the early 1990s. With its population of more than 1 billion already pressing the limits of its resources, China began to confront the need to control population growth. The state set targets for the total numbers of births in each place and then assigned quotas to smaller units, down to individual factories and other workplaces. Young people had to get permission from their work units to get married and then to have a child. Women who became pregnant outside the system faced strong pressure from birth-control workers and local party officials to have an abortion. The government promoted one-child families through financial incentives and bureaucratic regulations. In the cities, one-child families became commonplace. In the countryside, families with two or even three children remained common, because In the post-Mao period, China's relationship with Western nations and Japan continued to improve, and full diplomatic relations were established with the United States in 1979. Friction with the USSR continued, however, and because Soviet influence was growing in Vietnam, relations with Vietnam deteriorated. In 1978 harassed ethnic Chinese from Vietnam streamed into southern China. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia and toppled that country's Chinese-backed government in early 1979, China made a punitive strike into Vietnam, but soon withdrew. Under Deng, the Chinese government somewhat relaxed its control of the expression of ideas and the arts. A so-called literature of the wounded appeared at the end of the 1970s, as those who had suffered during the Cultural Revolution found it possible to express their sense of betrayal without government repression. Greater tolerance on the part of the government soon resulted in much livelier press and media in China, with investigative reporters covering corruption; philosophers reexamining the premises of Marxism; and novelists, poets, and filmmakers experimenting with previously forbidden explorations of sexuality. In the 1980s, as television became commonplace, ordinary Chinese learned more about life in other countries and began to make new demands on the government for improvements in their standard of living and more choice in their daily lives. As many young people began adopting aspects of Western popular culture, especially its music, hairstyles, and emphasis on individualism, conservatives in the CCP responded with periodic campaigns against bourgeois liberalism?and spiritual pollution.? Despite its relative openness in the cultural and economic spheres, the government kept a tight reign on political criticism. During the Democracy Wall movement in 1978 and 1979, hundreds of people posted so-called big-character posters on a wall in Beijing to protest against political corruption, injustice, and lack of political freedom. Although it initially encouraged criticism of previous government policies, the government closed the wall when posters critical of the existing Communist leadership and the Communist system began appearing and imprisoned the author of some of the most outspoken posters, Wei Jingshen. Student protests occurred in several cities during the 1980s. The most massive one occurred in Beijing in 1989. In April of that year, students and others marched in the capital to support freedom of the press, educational reforms, and an end to political corruption. The protests swelled in May, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Beijing to end the 30-year rift between the USSR and China. The protesters occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square until the morning of June 4, when armored troops stormed the city center, g. Recent Developments With the fall of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the breakup of the USSR in 1991, China became the only remaining major world power with a Communist government. The Chinese government worked to ensure that its own system did not follow a similar demise as the USSR. The state continued to pursue economic policies that reduced poverty, such as allowing workers to move to search for jobs. Meanwhile, the government also maintained Deng remained the dominant figure in China throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, retaining behind-the-scenes influence even as he steadily surrendered his public titles. With Deng's help, Jiang gradually consolidated his power and influence within the party and government. In 1993 Jiang became president, maintaining his role as party general secretary. Unlike the period following Mao's death, China's political climate remained calm after Deng died in February 1997, and Jiang continued the economic liberalization begun by Deng. Deng and Jiang's reforms in the 1990s were particularly successful at stimulating economic growth, but they also created problems for the Communist leadership. China's foreign debt began to increase rapidly, and growing consumer demand led to rising inflation. Uncontrolled industrial and agricultural growth caused environmental degradation in much of China. Moreover, there was pervasive corruption among party and government officials who profited from their power to grant permits and licenses and from their control over basic supplies needed by private businesses. The government has attempted to combat the corruption, imprisoning a number of prominent party officials convicted of using their positions for personal gain. During the late 1990s China's international standing improved. In 1997 Hong Kong was transferred from British to Chinese control, and Macau followed in 1999, reverting from Portugal to China. The Chinese economy fared relatively well in a currency crisis that swept the region. In 1998 U.S. president Bill Clinton visited China and debated political issues on live television. In late 1999 China agreed to trade reforms designed to open the Chinese economy to international competition and investment. In recognition of these reforms, the U.S. Congress in 2000 passed legislation giving China permanent normal trading status. |
